Sarcastic funny jerk. Of course, there's no way to not be a jerk when replying sarcastically to somebody else's flamebait. The intent was funny, with a small, humorous lesson in "this is a very small trend."
I got a kick out of his link to turn-based war games, too, but didn't bother to point it out the first time. Let's compare the total number of turn-based war games to the total number of cel-shaded games and see which is a more prevalent trend, eh?
And in the meantime, I will return to trying to figure out where the Y, Pr, and Pb outputs from my gamecube plug into this awesome new sundried-tomato home theatre bagel I bought. I really don't want to have to buy any more jumper cables-- the quality ones are just too pricey-- but I'm just plain sick of playing games on the same old TV device that all the "cool" people think I should use.
Poor wording on my part. They have to *check* all the tiles every time. They only have to reglue the missing ones. I had always heard that this was a painstaking process, but perhaps it's been overplayed. And the engines are definitely a joke when it comes to "reusability". Thank you for elaborating on my "etc..."
And they should really quit with that whole "first person" genre. I'm getting totally sick of this whole "realistic 3D" schtick too-- the only thing more worn out than that is the *completely* overused "2D" fad. And sound. Man, everybody and their stupid brother has sound in a game these days. What happened to originality?
What's up with all the games where you have to shoot things? Seems like nearly every game is doing that just because it's cool. And all these damn RPGs, where you just wander around levelling up your characters? I see more of those than I see zits in a junior high school after pizza lunch day. Seems like every puzzle game made these days involves dropping and rotating oddly shaped and colored pieces into a well.
All these stupid game consoles hook up to "TVs" too. WTF is that about? Just because TVs are cool and popular-- why can't we have a game console that hooks up to a bagel? Or your cat?
Shit, man-- there are plenty of games. Just buy the ones you like and ignore the rest.
Calling the shuttle reusable is specious at best. The thing requires a $500Million retrofit for EVERY SINGLE FLIGHT it makes. The tiles all have to be reglued, things have to be towed out of the ocean, etc...
It's a one-time use vehicle that we are spending unholy sums of money to fly repeatedly. A split system is a much better idea-- launch the people on a small but completely reliable people-mover, to catch up with a large-but-sloppy-and-cheap cargo hauling ship. Sure, you'll lose an occasional cargo ship-- but if you can make it enough cheaper, people can afford to rebuild and send their crap up twice for the same price as one trip today.
Why waste my money buying a PS1 or PS2? I'll just wait until the PS3 is cheap. Or maybe the PS4. Heck, maybe I'll just adopt a policy of buying every 10th console from Sony.
But seriously, this is good news for the handful of us that are still putting off our first Playstation purchase. I'll just keep waiting.:)
You have got to be kidding. I have, over the last 8 to 10 years, asked to be added to the do-not-call list of EVERY TELEMARKETER who called my house when I was home to answer. I *STILL* got 3 or 4 calls a day from telemarketers during the evening hours when I was home. Suing? Yeah, right. You folks may be required by law to identify yourselves, but just TRY to prove which calling center called you from the end of the average telephone user. Centers call on the behalf of multiple companies, and we have no idea which center you're calling from. If I ask who you are, you fuckers hang up. You block my goddamn caller ID. I go right back on your lists every time I move, and you seem to have a hard time finding where you put that darned list in the first place-- because NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I ASK TO BE REMOVED, my average daily number of telemarketing calls DOES NOT CHANGE. If centers are actually no longer calling, they must be notifying other centers to pick up the slack, or closing down and moving to a new office every 3 months so they can pitch the list and be a "new call center".
The only thing that stopped it was my state's do-not-call list. This new DNC list adds another level of federal fun to the overwhelming national sentiment that telemarketing sucks poop right out of a hose attached to the collective asses of every cow in North America. Don't freaking call me. And don't take jobs that violate your principles, especially if you "don't care if they shut down tomorrow."
No, we couldn't have stopped it "a long time ago". We tried and tried. Now, the law has been changed, and we have a reasonable recourse. Don't like it? Well, golly-gosh-dangit-- too bad.
You are very right. My lack of examples is not proof. In addition, I agree with you that more crap is being made today. But my disagreement is mainly with the suggestion that *only* crap is being made today.
Sadly, I was not alive then. I have, however, just checked with a grandfather (not my own-- he's not exactly handy just now). The price of a sunbeam mixer in 1950 would have been around $20, by his memory. Or about $150 today. Not quite as bad as I expected, but you can see that they definitely paid a premium for stuff back then compared to the price of crap at target today. The only example of historical crap from my personal experience is an old flashlight I found out in my grandfathers' barn-- the thing was rusted clean through. I suspect the maglight i bought 10 years ago will look much like it does today in another 40.
There does exist a new market today. Consumers have asked for cheaper shit, and cheaper shit is being made in larger quantities and in a wider variety of products than it used to be. But the quality stuff is still being made, at comparable prices.
You DID have to pay a premium for it. If you look at the cost of your grandparents' mixer in relation to their total income, you'll find that it's a MUCH larger chunk of change than it is today.
According to this link the conversion factor between 1950s dollars and 2003 dollars is 0.131.
To be absolutely clear, this means that the $219 *commercial grade* mixer of today would have cost a whopping $28.69 in 1950. Not knowing what they paid for their 1950s mixer, I can't do the conversion the other way-- but I think you'll find that they cost at least as much as that commercial mixer does.
Of course, if you can't live without the 50's charm, you'll have to stick with antiques.
The point is, this is just how some stuff was made back then. Please try to understand that crap was made back then, too. You've just never seen it.
That light bulb STILL WORKS. Its contemporaries are all burned out. Thus, you point at it and say "look how amazing things were in 1902!" while 99.9999% of all the other lightbulbs from 1902 are long gone.
To reiterate....
The crap goes away. The good stuff lasts, and everyone will point and oo and ah. Just like you just did.
You missed the point completely. Those things are all still working. Where are the rest of your grandparents' kitchen appliances? If you want quality, you have to pay for it. Why did you buy your milkshake mixer at a department store? Hamilton Beach still makes a sweet all-metal milkshake mixer available for sale right here. It costs $219. Pony up for quality, or quit whining about how nothing is built like it used to be. Not happy with stick-built houses? Pony up for solid brick. Not happy with the stationary bike you got at wal-mart? Get something built for a health club, which will survive 300 fatasses per day pedalling the crap out of it nonstop.
Sure, MOST modern day products are crap. But in 50 years, the crap will be broken, tossed, and completely out-of-mind, while people who bothered to shop somewhere besides target's bargain bin will have gear that still runs.
And that stuff is all your 2053 counterparts will see. Your shitty mixer will not be around for comparison.
1. Find out how many edison bulbs were manufactured, ever.
2. Find out how many are still working.
3. Grab a calculator, and do some quick math to figure out what percentage that is.
But seriously-- there are going to be counterexamples on both sides. Some things today are made to break. Some things back then were made well. The converse to both is also true. But the trend is still valid. Crap breaks and goes away, good stuff (AND bad stuff that was waaaaaay out on the edge of the bell curve for reliability) lasts long enough for people to mistakenly assume everything comtemporary to it was well made.
I think you failed to think things through all the way with your post. If Edison bulbs were good, and lasted this long, they are exactly the sort of thing I was referring to.. If they had broken, and been forgotten about, you would have posted about something else that still worked as an example of "good things from back then." Your dad's slide rule, maybe-- or a microscope you bought at an antique store.
I keep seeing people say this, but it just isn't true. The reason stuff from the 50's seems to be well-built and last forever is because the crap is already broken and gone. All that's left is the good stuff. In another 53 years, nobody will remember the $40 VCRs that died in two years. But there will be people hanging onto commercial video-editing decks that really were built to last. And everyone will run around saying things like "i wish they built things as well as they did back in 2003!"
and not a bit to electrolyze. It would take me a good long time to figure out exactly how much water we're talking about being turned into hydrogen to keep a day or two's worth of backup power in every house, but you are probabaly right that it's not an insignificant amount.
Depending on your location, this could be a serious issue. It's not a big deal where I live in Indiana, but in the middle of Nevada it may not be feasible. When it becomes an issue, it's entirely possible to switch to catalyzed natural gas as your hydrogen source, and it's worth noting that any water "sidelined" by converting to hydrogen can be made into water again quickly by just "burning" the hydrogen in your fuel cell.
I will clarify, since I made some assumptions in my statement. Clearly, what you suggest is workable, and is only slightly removed from where gasoline comes from in the first place. AND we probably should be doing it in the practical locations (near sewage treatment plants) However, I was assuming we were talking about doing this in the average person's home or apartment-- something that requires a relatively simple, clean process that does not involve large quantities of sewage and a bunch of soggy bottomland.
You're absolutely right, but there's more than a small difference in the practicality of these two production methods.
Because solar needs a storage system, too, and hydrogen seems far better than big blocks of batteries. Or did you mean for your solar "backup" system to only work during daylight?
A solar power system that functions around the clock and through extended loss of the power grid is every bit as complicated as this "half-baked" storage idea, and without something like hydrogen, it requires something like a battery array. Which is "quarter-baked" at best-- pitching a ton or two of big toxic batteries every few years is a lousy idea whether you're an environmental nut or just a normal person who hates large recurring costs.
This article is not talking about using the hydrogen as the power source. They *intend* to keep right on using the grid for power. All this does is (like you suggest) give you a way to store that power up at your house as hydrogen for when the grid isn't working. It's like a big UPS. For your whole house.
Just to repeat this... hydrogen in a setup like this is NOT A POWER SOURCE. What they are describing is essentially a great big UPS for your house that uses hydrogen as a battery. When your power is running, you crack water and fill your tank. When your power dies, you use your fuel cell and your hydrogen tank to run your house.
Other sources for "charging your hydrogen battery" are catalyzing natural gas, or using your SuperHippie 3000 Solar Panel Array to do it without having to mess with the grid.
One more time, and I will also exhort you to THINK!... the power still comes from where it does now. Hydrogen is the storage mechanism not the power source.
And why hydrogen over, say, gasoline or propane? Because you can't make gasoline out of water and sunlight.
The idea being presented here is exactly what you are talking about. It's not using hydrogen as the source, just as a storage mechanism. So, when the big generator is working, you can electrolyze water and fill your hydrogen tank. When the big generator dies, you and all your neighbors power yourselves, or even pump power into the grid.
The hydrogen you use could also come from catalyzing natural gas at your end, or by using non-grid power to crack water.
The advantage over gasoline and propane is that you can make it yourself. Just TRY to find an easy way to refill your gasoline tank using only electricity (or for extra credit, sunlight or wind) and water. With hydrogen, you're off and running.
To sum it all up-- hydrogen is best thought of as a storage method, not a fuel. And the processes by which you can get it are simple enough to perform in your house, using the two most common power sources already present, natural gas and electricity.
Of course, I don't see anything like this happening nationwide any time soon, either. But it's the sort of thing I'd like to have around the house. A huge UPS for everything!
A long damn time ago. Sadly, I read for quite a while before bothering with registering-- I had that stereotypical slashdot fear of actually signing up for things. Oh, to have a 4-digit account.
I can't believe I'm replying to this, but it needs to all be layed out straight. This was supposed to be informative, not argumentative. SO..... here's the whole deal:
1. In a welcome break from their normal policy, Sony is actually including a CF slot. There are some features limited-- you can't record 32fps video at 640x480 on a Memory Stick or a CF card. For that, you need the faster "Memory Stick Pro". I'm having a hard time finding a CF card that will match the MS Pro spec of 15Mbps minimum write speed/160Mbps read speed, so it may simply be an innocent "CF cards aren't fast enough" problem. On the other hand, it very well could be Sony dicking us over, and it would be par for the course. As to meeting the capacity needs, there are 1GB memory sticks available. Pricey, but available.
2. The camera requires infoLithium batteries. The "infoLithium" brand belongs to sony, but a battery is a battery is a battery-- it's not like Sony has some sort of proprietary standard for moving electrons in and out of the camera. Generic replacements for infoLithium batteries are widely available (here for example, right off the top of google). You can get some big-assed NiMH AAs (2200mAh, from what I could dig up) but they will be larger, and they will not last as many charge cycles or perform as well as a Li-Ion battery. Is there a non-proprietary Li-Ion battery for consumer stuff?
Ah well. All i intended to do was point out that Sony had actually taken a step in the right direction for a change. I have a Canon, and no particular interest in Sony gear.
If you had bothered to look, you would have noticed that this particular sony camera uses standard compact flash cards, in addition to sony's normal memory stick.
No matter how hard you tried when you were a kid (and believe me, I did) you just couldn't possibly have played ALL the good NES and SNES games out there. I am more than happy to play these "rehashed" games for the first time, and am even happier to see sequels to games I enjoyed.
Select and buy your favorite combination of solar, wind, gas generators, or whatever else your locale will support. Call the power company and tell them to disconnect you, and would they PLEASE get their damn wires and poles off your property.
the facts say otherwise, much to my surprise. While america uses a ridiculous amount of energy per capita (the statistic I had been thinking of, which shows us at roughly 4.5 times the world average per-capita usage), the country is fairly normal in terms of BTUs per dollar of GNP. Consider that the US requires 12,000 BTUs per dollar of GNP, while China requires 46,000 and India requires 31,000. So, while the US is apparently using power as if everyone has their own home aluminum processing plant-- we are at least getting something done with it.
Stats on per capita energy usage: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/northamerica/e ngecon.h tm
Stats on BTU/GNP here: http://www.ecoworld.org/Energy/Articles/articles2. cfm?TID=294
I must disagree on your views on conservation, though. While conservation will not remove the need to expand production capacity, there is simply no need to waste power lighting rooms you aren't using, or keeping your house colder than 75 in the summer. I'm not advocating we all live in shacks-- just live like you do now, use some common sense, and don't waste what you don't need. If you feel especially conservative, get some CFL light bulbs, an on-demand water heater, or some new insulation. Nothing life-changing. Just simple, practical stuff.
They don't care *who* you are, just that "the guy who is using this particular card" buys whatever it is you buy. They're still getting records.
Simple fix-- trade cards with people. Find a friendly person in line and offer to swap cards. Swap with your friends. Swap with out-of-town relatives. Get three or four cards and use them intermittently, and then swap all of *them* out. Tell everybody you swap with to keep swapping. NOW their records are useless.
Or, you can take the lazy-man's route, like I do. Just claim to have forgotten your card EVERY TIME, and the nice cashier will usually swipe a "store card" through for you. Problem solved.
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Sarcastic funny jerk. Of course, there's no way to not be a jerk when replying sarcastically to somebody else's flamebait. The intent was funny, with a small, humorous lesson in "this is a very small trend."
I got a kick out of his link to turn-based war games, too, but didn't bother to point it out the first time. Let's compare the total number of turn-based war games to the total number of cel-shaded games and see which is a more prevalent trend, eh?
And in the meantime, I will return to trying to figure out where the Y, Pr, and Pb outputs from my gamecube plug into this awesome new sundried-tomato home theatre bagel I bought. I really don't want to have to buy any more jumper cables-- the quality ones are just too pricey-- but I'm just plain sick of playing games on the same old TV device that all the "cool" people think I should use.
Poor wording on my part. They have to *check* all the tiles every time. They only have to reglue the missing ones. I had always heard that this was a painstaking process, but perhaps it's been overplayed. And the engines are definitely a joke when it comes to "reusability". Thank you for elaborating on my "etc..."
And they should really quit with that whole "first person" genre. I'm getting totally sick of this whole "realistic 3D" schtick too-- the only thing more worn out than that is the *completely* overused "2D" fad. And sound. Man, everybody and their stupid brother has sound in a game these days. What happened to originality?
What's up with all the games where you have to shoot things? Seems like nearly every game is doing that just because it's cool. And all these damn RPGs, where you just wander around levelling up your characters? I see more of those than I see zits in a junior high school after pizza lunch day. Seems like every puzzle game made these days involves dropping and rotating oddly shaped and colored pieces into a well.
All these stupid game consoles hook up to "TVs" too. WTF is that about? Just because TVs are cool and popular-- why can't we have a game console that hooks up to a bagel? Or your cat?
Shit, man-- there are plenty of games. Just buy the ones you like and ignore the rest.
Calling the shuttle reusable is specious at best. The thing requires a $500Million retrofit for EVERY SINGLE FLIGHT it makes. The tiles all have to be reglued, things have to be towed out of the ocean, etc...
It's a one-time use vehicle that we are spending unholy sums of money to fly repeatedly. A split system is a much better idea-- launch the people on a small but completely reliable people-mover, to catch up with a large-but-sloppy-and-cheap cargo hauling ship. Sure, you'll lose an occasional cargo ship-- but if you can make it enough cheaper, people can afford to rebuild and send their crap up twice for the same price as one trip today.
Why waste my money buying a PS1 or PS2? I'll just wait until the PS3 is cheap. Or maybe the PS4. Heck, maybe I'll just adopt a policy of buying every 10th console from Sony.
:)
But seriously, this is good news for the handful of us that are still putting off our first Playstation purchase. I'll just keep waiting.
You have got to be kidding. I have, over the last 8 to 10 years, asked to be added to the do-not-call list of EVERY TELEMARKETER who called my house when I was home to answer. I *STILL* got 3 or 4 calls a day from telemarketers during the evening hours when I was home. Suing? Yeah, right. You folks may be required by law to identify yourselves, but just TRY to prove which calling center called you from the end of the average telephone user. Centers call on the behalf of multiple companies, and we have no idea which center you're calling from. If I ask who you are, you fuckers hang up. You block my goddamn caller ID. I go right back on your lists every time I move, and you seem to have a hard time finding where you put that darned list in the first place-- because NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I ASK TO BE REMOVED, my average daily number of telemarketing calls DOES NOT CHANGE. If centers are actually no longer calling, they must be notifying other centers to pick up the slack, or closing down and moving to a new office every 3 months so they can pitch the list and be a "new call center".
The only thing that stopped it was my state's do-not-call list. This new DNC list adds another level of federal fun to the overwhelming national sentiment that telemarketing sucks poop right out of a hose attached to the collective asses of every cow in North America. Don't freaking call me. And don't take jobs that violate your principles, especially if you "don't care if they shut down tomorrow."
No, we couldn't have stopped it "a long time ago". We tried and tried. Now, the law has been changed, and we have a reasonable recourse. Don't like it? Well, golly-gosh-dangit-- too bad.
You are very right. My lack of examples is not proof. In addition, I agree with you that more crap is being made today. But my disagreement is mainly with the suggestion that *only* crap is being made today.
Sadly, I was not alive then. I have, however, just checked with a grandfather (not my own-- he's not exactly handy just now). The price of a sunbeam mixer in 1950 would have been around $20, by his memory. Or about $150 today. Not quite as bad as I expected, but you can see that they definitely paid a premium for stuff back then compared to the price of crap at target today. The only example of historical crap from my personal experience is an old flashlight I found out in my grandfathers' barn-- the thing was rusted clean through. I suspect the maglight i bought 10 years ago will look much like it does today in another 40.
There does exist a new market today. Consumers have asked for cheaper shit, and cheaper shit is being made in larger quantities and in a wider variety of products than it used to be. But the quality stuff is still being made, at comparable prices.
You DID have to pay a premium for it. If you look at the cost of your grandparents' mixer in relation to their total income, you'll find that it's a MUCH larger chunk of change than it is today.
According to this link the conversion factor between 1950s dollars and 2003 dollars is 0.131.
To be absolutely clear, this means that the $219 *commercial grade* mixer of today would have cost a whopping $28.69 in 1950. Not knowing what they paid for their 1950s mixer, I can't do the conversion the other way-- but I think you'll find that they cost at least as much as that commercial mixer does.
Of course, if you can't live without the 50's charm, you'll have to stick with antiques.
The point is, this is just how some stuff was made back then. Please try to understand that crap was made back then, too. You've just never seen it.
That light bulb STILL WORKS. Its contemporaries are all burned out. Thus, you point at it and say "look how amazing things were in 1902!" while 99.9999% of all the other lightbulbs from 1902 are long gone.
To reiterate....
The crap goes away. The good stuff lasts, and everyone will point and oo and ah. Just like you just did.
You missed the point completely. Those things are all still working. Where are the rest of your grandparents' kitchen appliances? If you want quality, you have to pay for it. Why did you buy your milkshake mixer at a department store? Hamilton Beach still makes a sweet all-metal milkshake mixer available for sale right here. It costs $219. Pony up for quality, or quit whining about how nothing is built like it used to be. Not happy with stick-built houses? Pony up for solid brick. Not happy with the stationary bike you got at wal-mart? Get something built for a health club, which will survive 300 fatasses per day pedalling the crap out of it nonstop.
Sure, MOST modern day products are crap. But in 50 years, the crap will be broken, tossed, and completely out-of-mind, while people who bothered to shop somewhere besides target's bargain bin will have gear that still runs.
And that stuff is all your 2053 counterparts will see. Your shitty mixer will not be around for comparison.
1. Find out how many edison bulbs were manufactured, ever.
2. Find out how many are still working.
3. Grab a calculator, and do some quick math to figure out what percentage that is.
But seriously-- there are going to be counterexamples on both sides. Some things today are made to break. Some things back then were made well. The converse to both is also true. But the trend is still valid. Crap breaks and goes away, good stuff (AND bad stuff that was waaaaaay out on the edge of the bell curve for reliability) lasts long enough for people to mistakenly assume everything comtemporary to it was well made.
I think you failed to think things through all the way with your post. If Edison bulbs were good, and lasted this long, they are exactly the sort of thing I was referring to.. If they had broken, and been forgotten about, you would have posted about something else that still worked as an example of "good things from back then." Your dad's slide rule, maybe-- or a microscope you bought at an antique store.
I keep seeing people say this, but it just isn't true. The reason stuff from the 50's seems to be well-built and last forever is because the crap is already broken and gone. All that's left is the good stuff. In another 53 years, nobody will remember the $40 VCRs that died in two years. But there will be people hanging onto commercial video-editing decks that really were built to last. And everyone will run around saying things like "i wish they built things as well as they did back in 2003!"
and not a bit to electrolyze. It would take me a good long time to figure out exactly how much water we're talking about being turned into hydrogen to keep a day or two's worth of backup power in every house, but you are probabaly right that it's not an insignificant amount.
Depending on your location, this could be a serious issue. It's not a big deal where I live in Indiana, but in the middle of Nevada it may not be feasible. When it becomes an issue, it's entirely possible to switch to catalyzed natural gas as your hydrogen source, and it's worth noting that any water "sidelined" by converting to hydrogen can be made into water again quickly by just "burning" the hydrogen in your fuel cell.
Nonetheless, you make a very good point, indeed.
I will clarify, since I made some assumptions in my statement. Clearly, what you suggest is workable, and is only slightly removed from where gasoline comes from in the first place. AND we probably should be doing it in the practical locations (near sewage treatment plants) However, I was assuming we were talking about doing this in the average person's home or apartment-- something that requires a relatively simple, clean process that does not involve large quantities of sewage and a bunch of soggy bottomland.
You're absolutely right, but there's more than a small difference in the practicality of these two production methods.
Because solar needs a storage system, too, and hydrogen seems far better than big blocks of batteries. Or did you mean for your solar "backup" system to only work during daylight?
A solar power system that functions around the clock and through extended loss of the power grid is every bit as complicated as this "half-baked" storage idea, and without something like hydrogen, it requires something like a battery array. Which is "quarter-baked" at best-- pitching a ton or two of big toxic batteries every few years is a lousy idea whether you're an environmental nut or just a normal person who hates large recurring costs.
This article is not talking about using the hydrogen as the power source. They *intend* to keep right on using the grid for power. All this does is (like you suggest) give you a way to store that power up at your house as hydrogen for when the grid isn't working. It's like a big UPS. For your whole house.
Just to repeat this... hydrogen in a setup like this is NOT A POWER SOURCE. What they are describing is essentially a great big UPS for your house that uses hydrogen as a battery. When your power is running, you crack water and fill your tank. When your power dies, you use your fuel cell and your hydrogen tank to run your house.
Other sources for "charging your hydrogen battery" are catalyzing natural gas, or using your SuperHippie 3000 Solar Panel Array to do it without having to mess with the grid.
One more time, and I will also exhort you to THINK!... the power still comes from where it does now. Hydrogen is the storage mechanism not the power source.
And why hydrogen over, say, gasoline or propane? Because you can't make gasoline out of water and sunlight.
The idea being presented here is exactly what you are talking about. It's not using hydrogen as the source, just as a storage mechanism. So, when the big generator is working, you can electrolyze water and fill your hydrogen tank. When the big generator dies, you and all your neighbors power yourselves, or even pump power into the grid.
The hydrogen you use could also come from catalyzing natural gas at your end, or by using non-grid power to crack water.
The advantage over gasoline and propane is that you can make it yourself. Just TRY to find an easy way to refill your gasoline tank using only electricity (or for extra credit, sunlight or wind) and water. With hydrogen, you're off and running.
To sum it all up-- hydrogen is best thought of as a storage method, not a fuel. And the processes by which you can get it are simple enough to perform in your house, using the two most common power sources already present, natural gas and electricity.
Of course, I don't see anything like this happening nationwide any time soon, either. But it's the sort of thing I'd like to have around the house. A huge UPS for everything!
A long damn time ago. Sadly, I read for quite a while before bothering with registering-- I had that stereotypical slashdot fear of actually signing up for things. Oh, to have a 4-digit account.
I'd guess '97 or '98-- I'm not entirely sure.
I can't believe I'm replying to this, but it needs to all be layed out straight. This was supposed to be informative, not argumentative. SO..... here's the whole deal:
1. In a welcome break from their normal policy, Sony is actually including a CF slot. There are some features limited-- you can't record 32fps video at 640x480 on a Memory Stick or a CF card. For that, you need the faster "Memory Stick Pro". I'm having a hard time finding a CF card that will match the MS Pro spec of 15Mbps minimum write speed/160Mbps read speed, so it may simply be an innocent "CF cards aren't fast enough" problem. On the other hand, it very well could be Sony dicking us over, and it would be par for the course. As to meeting the capacity needs, there are 1GB memory sticks available. Pricey, but available.
2. The camera requires infoLithium batteries. The "infoLithium" brand belongs to sony, but a battery is a battery is a battery-- it's not like Sony has some sort of proprietary standard for moving electrons in and out of the camera. Generic replacements for infoLithium batteries are widely available (here for example, right off the top of google). You can get some big-assed NiMH AAs (2200mAh, from what I could dig up) but they will be larger, and they will not last as many charge cycles or perform as well as a Li-Ion battery. Is there a non-proprietary Li-Ion battery for consumer stuff?
Ah well. All i intended to do was point out that Sony had actually taken a step in the right direction for a change. I have a Canon, and no particular interest in Sony gear.
If you had bothered to look, you would have noticed that this particular sony camera uses standard compact flash cards, in addition to sony's normal memory stick.
No matter how hard you tried when you were a kid (and believe me, I did) you just couldn't possibly have played ALL the good NES and SNES games out there. I am more than happy to play these "rehashed" games for the first time, and am even happier to see sequels to games I enjoyed.
Select and buy your favorite combination of solar, wind, gas generators, or whatever else your locale will support. Call the power company and tell them to disconnect you, and would they PLEASE get their damn wires and poles off your property.
the facts say otherwise, much to my surprise. While america uses a ridiculous amount of energy per capita (the statistic I had been thinking of, which shows us at roughly 4.5 times the world average per-capita usage), the country is fairly normal in terms of BTUs per dollar of GNP. Consider that the US requires 12,000 BTUs per dollar of GNP, while China requires 46,000 and India requires 31,000. So, while the US is apparently using power as if everyone has their own home aluminum processing plant-- we are at least getting something done with it.
e ngecon.h tm
. cfm?TID=294
Stats on per capita energy usage:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/northamerica/
Stats on BTU/GNP here: http://www.ecoworld.org/Energy/Articles/articles2
I must disagree on your views on conservation, though. While conservation will not remove the need to expand production capacity, there is simply no need to waste power lighting rooms you aren't using, or keeping your house colder than 75 in the summer. I'm not advocating we all live in shacks-- just live like you do now, use some common sense, and don't waste what you don't need. If you feel especially conservative, get some CFL light bulbs, an on-demand water heater, or some new insulation. Nothing life-changing. Just simple, practical stuff.
They don't care *who* you are, just that "the guy who is using this particular card" buys whatever it is you buy. They're still getting records.
Simple fix-- trade cards with people. Find a friendly person in line and offer to swap cards. Swap with your friends. Swap with out-of-town relatives. Get three or four cards and use them intermittently, and then swap all of *them* out. Tell everybody you swap with to keep swapping. NOW their records are useless.
Or, you can take the lazy-man's route, like I do. Just claim to have forgotten your card EVERY TIME, and the nice cashier will usually swipe a "store card" through for you. Problem solved.